Clarion-Ledger

Federal panel to probe Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls. Developments are taking place just after the 35th anniversary of the Sept. 15, 1963, dynamiting of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Four girls — Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all 14 — were sitting in the basement when an explosion ripped through the building, killing them and injuring 20 others.

A white supremacist newspaper urging authorities to “Free Sam Bowers” has been tossed onto some Mississippians’ driveways, reviving memories of attempts six years ago to influence potential jurors in another trial.

A dozen days after Deavours Nix told a judge he was too sick to be jailed in the 1966 fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, the one-time Klansman endured 92-degree heat Tuesday to play golf.

Ellie J. Dahmer wept Thursday at the sight of three men being charged in her husband’s death in the firebombing of their home 32 years ago. The arrests brought her family closer to a justice they felt was denied when the man accused of ordering Vernon Dahmer’s death walked free after four hung juries in 1968 and 1969.

Two carloads of Klansmen firebombed the Dahmer home Jan. 10, 1966. In 1968 and 1969, juries convicted four Klansmen, but the man identified as ordering the raid was never convicted, despite four trials. Each of Sam Bowers’ previous trials ended in mistrials when jurors could not agree unanimously. Ellie Dahmer shed tears of joy when a jury pronounced Bowers guilty of killing her husband.

The same year Dennis Dahmer saw his father die in 1966, Bob Helfrich now a 44-year-old assistant district attorney in Forrest County, stood beside his father's hospital bed. Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan’s killing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer is no longer a professional calling for Helfrich. It’s a personal one.

At the same time as President Clinton began testifying before a grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a television report was giving details of jury selection in the trial of the man accused of masterminding the Jan. 10, 1966, killing of Ellie Dahmer’s husband, NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer.